Abstract
This chapter provides a historical overview of the U.S. system of engineering education from its origins in the nineteenth Century until the present. It is organized chronologically, describing the early institutional formation of the U.S. system of engineering education; the post World War II ascent of engineering science ideology; late- and post Cold War changes in engineering education. As a broad brush stroke history, this text does not attempt to be comprehensive, nor does it touch on every major historical development. Instead, the chapter adopts a more analytic view of the structural features of the U.S. system of engineering education and it transformation over time. The primary intent of the chapter is to provide background historical knowledge for the other chapters in his volume, but it also closes with several observations of broader interest.
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Notes
- 1.
The original text of the Morrill Act--> is available at this site: http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/ Morrill.html. Accessed Aug. 2012.
- 2.
- 3.
The so-called Mann Report --> originated with a conversation that began within SPEE --> in 1907, and the Society contributed both content and guidance to Mann (Grayson 1993).
- 4.
All of these studies were published or summarized in the society’s Journal of Engineering Education. Most are specifically cited in the text below.
- 5.
For one commentary on engineering science-->, see Ferguson (1992), pp. 160–161. But the concept also attracted the attention of historians of technology, most notably Edwin Layton ad David Channel, who in the 1960s and 1970s were exploring the nature and historical development of the engineering profession, as distinct from science (Layton 1971, 1976; Channell 1989).
- 6.
The seductive power of federal research funds was best shown at Georgia Tech, which also saw significant volumes of federal research by the early 1950s. When a faculty member pointedly asked at a faculty meeting whether Georgia Tech was accepting “tainted” money, the administrator responded that the only taint that mattered was that “there t’ain’t enough of it”(McMath et al. 1985, esp. pp. 212–217, 256–270; personal correspondence with August Giebelhaus).
- 7.
The history of MIT-->’s engineering degree programs has not received full treatment but some of the struggle over engineering science--> is described in Wildes and Lindgren (1985, pp. 310–319). The relevant primary sources may be found primarily in AC 12 College of Engineering. MIT Institute Archives and Special Collection, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Mass.
- 8.
Enrollment data from Story and Armsby (1951), 4; and Landis (1981), 784. There is some inconsistency in the two data sets, but the difference suggests simply that the growth may have been even more pronounced than reported here. While comparable figures for California are not available for the entire time period, undergraduate engineering enrollments in the University of California system rose from 2,606 in 1950 to 3,183 in 1960, which underrepresents the total change because of the growth of engineering degree programs in the California State Colleges, as described below. Story and Armsby (1951), p. 6 and Tolliver and Armsby (1961), p. 472.
- 9.
Some aspects of Boelter -->’s program are described in Wisnioski (2009). See also UCLA --> (1995). Other relevant sources are in the records of the College of Engineering (RS 38 and RS 52) located at the University Archives, UCLA --> Library, Los Angeles, CA; and the records of the College of Engineering (CU39) and UC President’s Office (CU5) located at Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA.
- 10.
Further discussions about broadened access in engineering education, and the subsequent phenomenon of “academic drift,” may be found in the following chapter in this volume, Steen Hyldgaard Christensen and Byron Newberry, “The role of research in academic drift processes in European and American professional engineering education outside the university sector.”
- 11.
See especially the correspondence related to accreditation--> in the folder, Engineers’ Council for Professional Development (ECPD), 1935–1967. Maine, University at Orono, president’s office files. Department of Special Collections, Raymond H. Folger Library, University of Maine -->. Orono, ME.
- 12.
These range from the Journal of Engineering Education to undergraduate magazines such as The Spectrum published by the undergraduate engineering students at Pennsylvania State University.
- 13.
See CDL 3/A12, UT College of Engineering Records for a collection of reports on course evaluations. University of Texas Archives, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin-->, Austin, TX. Related discussions, especially as they relate to sustainable development, may be found in Chap. 10 of this volume (Lucena, “Bridging Sustainable Community Development and Social Justice”), as well as in Jamison (2012).
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Akera, A., Seely, B. (2015). A Historical Survey of the Structural Changes in the American System of Engineering Education. In: Christensen, S., Didier, C., Jamison, A., Meganck, M., Mitcham, C., Newberry, B. (eds) International Perspectives on Engineering Education. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16169-3_1
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